


Choosing a Vampire

by Littlebluejay_hidingpeanuts



Category: Dracula - Bram Stoker, Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-24
Updated: 2020-01-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:48:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22381354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Littlebluejay_hidingpeanuts/pseuds/Littlebluejay_hidingpeanuts
Summary: Essay on the qualities of vampirism displayed in Dracula by Bram Stoker.
Kudos: 5
Collections: Classic Monster stories





	Choosing a Vampire

What are the qualities needed to create a good vampire? Vampire means drinking blood and becoming a predator to human prey, but it also means becoming immortal. There are certain human attributes which contribute to making a superior vampire. Dracula preyed upon Mina Harker not because her weakness of being a woman made her a good victim, but because she had the perfect balance of these qualities like attractiveness and intelligence that would make her a good vampire, qualities that Dracula may once have had, but had now lost. Mina was attractive and intelligent which would have made her a strong predator. The fact that she was a woman would only increase this strength like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Lucy was attractive and relatively smart, but something went wrong. She did not make it as a vampire. Dracula did not try to turn any of the men in this story because they lacked certain qualities, though he did come close with Jonathan Harker. Dracula’s brides were rather predatory, but they did not possess the most important quality needed to maintain one’s  immortality: adaptability. The brides could not change with the times, and so found themselves dead. Even Dracula had let himself go. He tried to adapt, but began too late. He was looking not for another bride, but a successor. He failed to accomplish this by his own fault and inability to change. Mina showed herself to be the only real successful vampire, even though she never actually became a vampire. 

Lucy Westenra was Dracula’s first attempt at creating a new companion. She was ideal if compared to Dracula’s three previous wives. She was intelligent given that she was an upper class woman being tutored. She had every opportunity to gain a good education, even at a college if she so desired. She was also attractive, but in a greater sense than being just physically beautiful. She had something more powerful than ordinary beauty, something that attracted three men to her. She exhibited an innocent form of the mesmerizing power the brides showed. She fit in perfectly with them once turned into a vampire herself. She was even dressed in white. Her attractiveness became hypnotic. Dr. Seward described how Lucy changed.  “The sweetness was turned to adamantine, heartless cruelty, and the purity to voluptuous wantonness,...the face became wreathed with a voluptuous smile,”  (324). Her beauty became a weapon that with her intelligence made her into a successful predator. She called to her husband Arthur, and he was hypnotized. Dr. Seward said,  “As for Arthur, he seemed under a spell; moving his hands from his face, he opened his arms [to her],”  (324). Her beauty was innocent before, and now a power that she could wield to catch her victims. She died because of her youth as a vampire. It had been only days after her human death. Lucy was feeding on children just like the brides. But she did not have the strength of a vampire like Dracula. She was young, and had not yet learned how to fight these hunters. She faced them instead doing the smart thing, and running. This was the cause of her death. 

It was not the same for the brides. They were just as beautiful with their  “brilliant white teeth that shone like pearls against the ruby of their voluptuous lips,”  (181). Their voices were just like Lucy’s. They were described in exactly the same way as  “something of the tingling of glass when struck,”  or  “the intolerable, tingling sweetness of water-glasses when played on by a cunning hand,”  (324 & 181). But they had something Lucy did not: age. This age was both an advantage and a curse for them. They had learned to stalk their prey, but they had forgotten how to survive. The brides lived in Dracula’s castle, having little contact with the outside world. They did not need to adapt as long as they stayed in their safe haven. When an outside threat in the form of Van Helsing came, they were unable to fight back. They were trapped within their old age just as they were trapped in sleep in their coffins by the day. They thought themselves safe, but it was because they returned to the safety of their coffins that their fates were sealed. Instead of adapting to this new threat by finding a bed within the unmarked dirt, as Dracula had been shown to do, they returned to where habit showed them they would be safest. And it was in their graves that Van Helsing knew where to find them. He said,  “I knew that there were at least three graves to find—graves that are inhabit,”  (453). He knew exactly where to look, and by searching the graves, he found the brides. They did not think to change their beds for one day, and so died. They had lost the quality needed to maintain their immortality. 

A pair of fangs does not a vampire make. Dracula did not teach Lucy how to be a vampire, or about self-preservation, and so she died. The brides were not smart enough to change where they slept for one day, so they died. Intelligence seems to be just as important as attractiveness to be a good vampire. So, why did Dracula not choose any of the men to become his next companion? It may have been about a power dynamic. Dracula may have wanted control over his companion. Hypothetically, based on the sexist Victorian attitudes of the novel, a woman would have been easier to control. A male vampire would have eventually equalled Dracula in power, and overthrown him. It probably had more to do with Dracula’s desire to show the human men how much more powerful he was. It is never clear why Dracula wanted to hurt these men by first picking off their loved ones, Lucy and Mina. He boasted to Mina that he  “commanded nations, and intrigued for them, and fought for them, hundreds of years before they were born,”  (386). This  “they”he spoke of could have been the  “nations,”or possibly referred to the men that hunt him now: Harker, Seward, Van Helsing, etc. Based on this one line we get directly from Dracula, it seems that Dracula wanted revenge because the people he once fought for were now attacking him. It sounds like he felt betrayed, but we never learn why. This was why Dracula did not choose one of the men to be his companion, but would they have made good vampires? Not really. Though Dr. Seward’s and Dr. Van Helsing’s intelligence might have made them cunning predators and able to weather the centuries, they had no real attractiveness to lure in their prey. They were not mesmerizing like the women, or like Dracula. They were also very human. They fought Dracula out of a sense of duty and patriotism, and justice for Lucy. They did not do it out of a predatory instinct. I imagine if they had been turned, the doctors would have mourned the loss of their humanity, not embraced the advantages of being a vampire. They would not have lasted long. 

Jonathan Harker was the closest Dracula came to making a male companion. Jonathan was the most feminine of the male characters. This could have been a strong addition to his power as a vampire were it not that he was too feminine. In every encounter he had with Dracula, except for his last, Jonathan took the role of the docile woman, specifically the victim. When he encountered the brides, he  “closed [his] eyes in a languorous ecstasy and waited--waited with beating heart,”  (182). Dracula saved him by declaring to the brides,  “This man belongs to me!”  (182). He then turned to Jonathan when he said,  “Yes, I too can love,”  implicitly saying that it was Jonathan he loved (183). After Jonathan fainted, it is suggested that it was Dracula who undressed him and put him in his bed as if Jonathan were his lover. This put Jonathan solidly in the place of the female. Later when Dracula attacked Mina, Jonathan was left ineffectively  “in a stupor such as we know the Vampires can produce,”  with  “his face flushed and breathing heavily,”  (382 & 381). It was only when Jonathan was surrounded by men, supporting him, that Jonathan was able to become a man himself, and cut off Dracula’s head (458). A vampire is not a victim. For all that Dracula loved Jonathan, Dracula would never have actually turned him. Jonathan was only ever going to be prey. This was why even after Dracula declared Jonathan to be his, Dracula did nothing to turn him. He left Jonathan as food for his brides. 

Mina is truly the only character that would have made it as a vampire. She was intelligent, a fact that surprised Van Helsing when he saw her short hand, and evidenced by her position as Lucy’s tutor. She came up with the idea for the men to use her connection to Dracula in their pursuit of him (405). She understood that they must all work together to bring down Dracula. Her education also implicitly suggests a desire to learn. I believe Dracula would have found no trouble in teaching Mina how to be a vampire. This form of docility would not have been a hindrance to being a vampire. It would actually have been a great advantage in adapting to the new worlds her immortality would have introduced her to. To be a superior vampire, one almost has to be an eternal student which Mina sort of was. Mina was also attractive. She was never explicitly described in the novel, but she was able to gain the love of even more men than Lucy did. Jonathan said,  “We men pledged ourselves to raise the veil of sorrow from the head of her whom, each in his own way, we loved,”  (394). At least seven men ended up in some way infatuated with Mina. She became a mother figure that the men unburdened themselves to, and a precious item the men wanted to protect. To Renfield, Mina was his reason to defy Dracula. To Dracula, she was his potential equal. He told her what he was going to make her into. He told Mina,  “...you, their best beloved one, are now to me, flesh of my flesh; blood of my blood; kin of my kin; my bountiful wine-press for a while; and shall be later on my companion and helper,”  (386). He meant that for a time, Mina would be his prey, but he would be turning her into a vampire, but she would not be simply a bride. She would be so close to him as to almost be him. He confined her head to his chest to force her to drink the blood that spilled there in a grotesque mimicry of a mother feeding her child. There was no such scene with Lucy. His words and actions showed that Dracula wanted a child that he could raise to be his equal; a child that he could use to connect him to this new era. She possessed the subversive attractiveness to draw in her prey, and the intelligence to learn, adapt, and have self-preservation. She even showed the potential of having a predatory instinct. When Dracula forced her head to his breast, Mina said she  “must either suffocate or swallow some of the [blood],”  (386). Mina did not fight against him. She did not struggle. Instead she felt paralyzed (385). She felt compelled to drink, and so she did. She chose vampirism over death, no matter how unclean she it made her feel (393). She would have been a good vampire, equal in power to Dracula himself. 

It was Dracula who failed to live up to his reputation. For all his command of nations, he was not part of the world anymore. Like the brides, he hid away in his castle. He tried to adapt to the times by buying properties and learning to speak proper English. He wanted to reintegrate himself into modern society. He was intelligent. He managed to thwart the men’s attempts to capture him all while attacking both of their beloved women. He was not particularly beautiful with his massive eyebrows,  “long white mustache,” “lofty domed forehead,”  cruel-looking mouth, and protruding  “peculiarly sharp white teeth,”  (163 & 165). Dracula was startling and enthralling. But he found himself threatened, unable to cope with the new world, and he returned to his castle. He ran back to safety where he believed he would have had the advantage of his home turf. He tried to adapt, but could not. In doing so, he exposed himself and died. Even Dracula failed to be a truly strong vampire. 

Mina Harker was the only character to possess the traits needed to be a powerful vampire. Lucy was young and untaught. The brides and Dracula were stuck in the past. For all of their intelligence and strength, Dr. Seward and Van Helsing were not attractive or predatory enough. Jonathan was too much of a woman, too much the prey than the predator. Only Mina stood apart as a true vampire. It was a pity that we never got to see her reach her full potential.    
  


Le Fanu, Sheridan, John Polidori, and Bram Stoker.  Three Vampire Tales. Ed. Anne Williams.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003. Print.


End file.
